Monday, November 13, 2006 - 10:00 AM
99-3

Walking in Milne's Footsteps: Revisiting the Original Catena in Western Kenya.

Lee Burras1, Mary Nyasimi2, and Lorna Butler2. (1) 1126 Agronomy Hall, Iowa State Univ, 100 Osborn Dr, Ames, IA 50011-1010, (2) Iowa State Univ, 111 Curtiss Hall, Ames, IA 50011

The catena is a fundamental concept of pedology.� It ties the distribution of soils across slopes to important pedogeomorphic processes.� Milne introduced and explained the term in the mid-1930's in three separate publications.�� These are a 1935 Soils Research article titled �Some suggested units of classification and mapping, particularly for East African soils,� a 1936 Nature article titled �Normal erosion as a factor in soil profile development,� and a 1936 book titled �A Provisional Soil Map of East Africa,��� The impact and value of the catena concept is nearly immeasurable with even a major interdisciplinary journal being titled simply �Catena.��� The goal of this paper is to evaluate whether the catena concept still fits Milne's original study sites in East Africa, specifically the upland regions of western Kenya.� The methods used were to revisit his field sites and remap soils across the same slopes Milne explored in the 1930's.� �The impetus for doing this study is to evaluate whether classical pedological concepts are useful in areas such as East Africa that have undergone extensive land degradation.